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November 6, 2012

SCBWI Conference, beach fun & tsunami, Story Masters

The last couple of weeks have been busy, busy. How I managed to schedule so much in a row was a bit of an oversight, but it's all good.

First up was the SCBWI Conference in Oakland, CA on October 20th. I'd been to this annual event a couple of other years, and though I preferred the old venue, the speaker line-up this year was fabulous. The lovely Tricia Lawrence, literary agent at Erin Murphy Literary Agency, was perhaps my favorite. She spoke about the importance of social media and how best to market yourself. Her positive crit of my pages and our short chit-chat afterward was an added highlight. Martha Mihalick, editor at Greenwillow Books, spoke about what makes a manuscript stand out from the rest. She went into specifics about plot, character, pacing, etc. I was also happy to get signed copies of "Ivy and the Meanstock" by Dawn Lairamore and "Time Between Us" by Tamara Ireland Stone (who landed her agent at this conference two years ago aaand her book has been optioned for film by CBS).

Three days post conference...Twelve family members, including myself, ventured to Maui. Minus a double-booked condo and a tsunami scare, it was fantastic! Hey, what's a vacay without a couple glitches? After twelve hours of travel (between our door step and the condo's) we arrived only to have another family show up 30 minutes later to take the condo. Turns out, our agent and I both had missed the computer error that set us up for 2013. Ugh. So, after a moment of panic and the desire to crawl in my suitcase and head home, we scrambled to find another place to stay. Luckily, where we stayed years before had an available condo for less money, so everything worked out. Even the tsunami scare 4 days later, complete with sirens and instructions to head to higher ground, major traffic, and sleeping in our car until the roads re-opened, turned out to be nothing more than a good story for later. And in light of the east coast hurricane, we felt darned fortunate!

My next adventure will take me to Seattle tomorrow morning to attend Story Masters, where I will learn from three masters: Donald Maass, James Scott Bell, and Christopher Vogler. I'm thrilled to be a part of this workshop and extra happy to be attending with my friend and writing buddy Rachel Allen Dillon. I should have more adventures (all good I hope!) to share when I return.